


As the Lights Went Out

by silvershadowsea



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, POV Attolia | Irene, i just wanted her to watch the knife dance and then it turned into Godgenides Feelings Hour, spoilers for Knife Dance short story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 08:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27468028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvershadowsea/pseuds/silvershadowsea
Summary: The queen of Attolia finds out just how closely connected Eugenides and his god are.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	As the Lights Went Out

**Author's Note:**

> title from “Dancing With Our Hands Tied” by Taylor Swift
> 
> _I'd kiss you as the lights went out  
>  Swaying as the room burned down  
> I'd hold you as the water rushes in  
> If I could dance with you again_

It was late in the evening of the third and final day of the feast of Cerulis. Attolia yawned as she stood up from her armchair and went to the window. She opened it as wide as it could go and closed her eyes, feeling the cool summer breeze on her face. The joyful sound of a pipe band drifted up from the grounds by the Tustis River where all the performers were camped. It had been a piper who had won the competition today, but Attolia could hardly remember her performance. Her thoughts were on the boy Druic, who’d attempted to perform the Eddisian knife dance. 

It had been foolish of the boy to think he could pull it off in front of the king, she thought with a smile. Eugenides had a natural--no, an  _ un _ natural--aptitude for such feats as the knife dance, anything that required inhuman amounts of strength, grace, timing, and coordination. It was difficult to believe that the Eugenides who’d tossed five knives so precisely into the air, whirling around to catch them perfectly each time, never stopping the dance for an instant, was the same Eugenides who had slumped in the golden throne beside hers all afternoon, bland smile pasted onto his face. She knew he was as glad of the change in schedule as she was, and more than happy to watch a few hours of performances, but by the end of the third long day, his exhaustion had become obvious. 

He’d woken screaming twice the night before, which was unusual. It typically happened only once, and lately there had even been a few nights he'd managed to sleep through entirely. "Was it me?" she'd asked, feeling a familiar dread in the pit of her stomach. He'd nodded tensely before reaching for her anyway, something that never ceased to surprise her. 

Neither of them had been able to sleep again after the second time he woke up, and Eugenides returned to his rooms just before dawn with dark circles under his eyes. That day they were both more tired than usual, but she was better at hiding it. So when a scrawny boy walked out to the open space in the middle of the banquet hall carrying several knives, and Eugenides sat up with interest, she knew his attention was genuine.

“Look,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. She inclined her head toward him. “Those are wooden. The balance is all wrong.”

She doubted anyone else would have noticed. The blades, to all appearances lethally sharp, gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the high windows.

The boy held up the knives in a fan shape, then drew one of them across the palm of his hand, and a line of red appeared there. He showed his hand to the gathered audience, several of whom gasped. Attolia frowned, just slightly. It almost looked like--

“Paint.” Eugenides shook his head, disappointed. “Now,” he continued with one eyebrow raised, crossing his arms and leaning back against his throne, “let’s see how much he knows.” 

The boy tossed the first of the knives in the air, then the second, and suddenly all five were flying. He was spinning and reaching, snatching them out of the air to toss them up again, bouncing the flats of the blades off the backs of his hands. He rarely stumbled, but there were occasional moments where he lost the precision of the dance and caught a knife just in time, or took an extra step to reach a knife that had gone wide, causing the audience to gasp in fear.

Attolia glanced at Eugenides. He was nodding slowly with a frown on his face. “It’s fairly accurate,” he said. “Which makes me wonder where he learned it. But some of it’s wrong, look--” he gestured toward the boy “--just…  _ there _ , that toss was backward.” 

And then the king was standing up. Attolia’s eyes widened and she hissed, “No, what are you doing?” and tried to grab his sleeve, but he was already down the steps of the stage. He was striding toward the boy, whose back was to him, he was there, the boy was turning around, and--

\--------------

“Irene,” came a voice from behind her in the dark. She jumped, and turned to see Eugenides closing her closet door behind him. “Did I startle you?”

“You did," she admitted, smiling wryly. She had been expecting him, and it shouldn’t surprise her anymore when he emerged from closets and stairwells and solid walls, but thoughts about the knife dance had pulled her focus.

He came over to stand beside her. “Were you listening to the music? I can hear it from my rooms too.” The pipe band hadn’t stopped playing. If anything, they sounded even livelier, joined now by other instruments. 

“I was, but then I was… distracted, thinking about today.”

Eugenides looked away, avoiding her eyes, and propped his forearms on the stone windowsill, hook next to hand in the moonlight. 

“The knife dance. That wasn’t entirely you, was it?” Attolia braced her elbows on the windowsill and leaned out the window too. She placed a hand under his chin and gently turned his face toward hers. He looked reassuringly normal now, the breeze playing through his hair, which had grown almost long enough to fall into his eyes.

He didn't answer, and there was no sound but the music. She waited. She could be patient forever if needed, and she knew he would give in.

“No,” he said finally. “No, it wasn’t. Does that scare you?”

Attolia considered this. She hadn't truly believed in the gods, old or new, before Eugenides, but when the Thief of Eddis had entered her life, he’d brought the gods with him. Still, that had not prepared her to see a stranger in her husband’s body tonight, leaping and spinning around the room in that impossible way. The knives--real ones this time--had flown through the air and bounced off the back of his hand and his hook with dizzying speed, but the potential for injury had been far less alarming than the look in his eyes, ancient and black and empty. 

That look wasn’t there now. It was just her husband, with the moonlight glinting off his hook and sliding over the feather-shaped scar on his cheek. She gazed at him for a long time. She  _ had  _ been afraid. With just a word, a suggestion, a moment of influence, the gods could reach into the human world and change the course of history. As queen of Attolia, she needed to maintain control of her country if she wanted to keep the throne, but the gods could step in so easily and disrupt her life and her rule. Today she’d seen Eugenides the god appear in the blink of an eye, taking over the body of Eugenides her king, and she knew how utterly insignificant she was in the face of all the power of the gods.

“It does scare me,” she said at last, “that he can alter you like that. But  _ you _ don’t scare me.” Caressing the cheek that had been marked by the god, she closed her eyes and kissed him.

After some time, he pulled away and stepped back from the window. “My Queen,” he said, bowing with a flourish, “dance with me.”

Attolia laughed. “Not on your life. Where are the knives?” She patted down his arms, checking for knives hidden up his sleeves. 

He grabbed one of her wrists with his left hand to stop her. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, laughing too. He let go of her wrist and carefully undid the buckle on the leather cuff around the stump of his right arm. Placing the hook on the bedside table, he massaged his arm to return the blood flow. 

“There, now it won’t get caught in your hair.” He glanced up at her with a smile. She’d taken her hair out of its elaborate style, but her attendants had not yet combed and braided it for the night, and it flowed down her back past her waist. 

Eugenides took her right hand in his left and guided it up to his shoulder. She brought her left arm up too and draped both around his neck. He placed his hand and his right wrist at her waist. "Now," he said, "dance with me."

It wasn't a dance so much as a swaying back and forth to the music still drifting in through the window, a lilting fiddle tune this time. But it was immeasurably comfortable, and Attolia closed her eyes and listened to the music. Eugenides pressed closer, arms sliding from her waist to the curve of her back, and it almost felt like floating. She opened her eyes to find him staring up at her. 

“Irene,” he murmured, soft brown eyes looking into hers.

“Gen,” she said just as quietly, and smiled at him.

The music faded, and he laid his head on her shoulder. She pressed a kiss into his hair, and they stayed there, dancing.


End file.
